Page 5 of Once Upon a Fall

I’ll just make do for the week. I’m good at making do.

Hal’s crestfallen eyes brighten. “Thank you so much, Rosie. I’ll just get her parked in there, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Sounds good. I’d help, but I . . .” I trail off, hitching a thumb behind me, toward the inn.

He shakes his head. “Don’t you worry about me. Thanks again.”

I smile to myself as I walk back inside, the sound of a hammer mixed with a screeching drill coming through the front door. My mom was always the person who made room when someone needed it. I loved that about her. I still do.

Right now, though, I’ve got an inn to get ready, and it’s going to take every moment that I can spare to do it.

Everything will be fine. Because it has to be.

Dean

The prince’s arrival was of little fanfare. And for that he was grateful, for he detested fanfare.

This feels different.

Driving into Autumn Ridge, a town I haven’t been to in a long while, is making me feel things. Strange things. Something I’m not sure I’ve felt before.

Is it indigestion?

No. I’m just feeling something in that organ that sits under my ribs.

I’m told it’s called a heart. I was also told I don’t have one of those recently—by a woman who was let go from a company I just finished consulting.

For the record, I never thought I was better than her. I just knew she was taking eighty percent of her workday to do only twenty percent of her work. Not very efficient. And cutting inefficiencies is my specialty.

But back to my odd feelings. I think it might be nostalgia. The winding roads, the rolling hills, the trees that are just starting to change, the early evening air. The smell. It’s all bringing me back to a time when life was much easier. A feeling I’d forgotten.

And it only gets stronger as I get closer to the covered bridge—the entrance to the small town. It looks exactly the same as it always has. I think the last time I saw it was eight years ago, and my grandpa died just a year later, with my grandma going into a home not long after that.

That bridge was always a symbol of my childhood summers. It meant the start of another magical summer with my grandparents. That same bridge haunted me whenever I left. Because I never wanted to.

I put up a fight every time the summer ended, wishing I could stay. And my grandma told me maybe someday I could stay with her. But that never happened. Life got too busy, and by the time I was fifteen I stopped going entirely.

And now I’m crossing the bridge again to figure out what to do with her house.

Would you listen to me right now? Take that, lady who said I didn’t have a heart.

I have to press on the brakes of my car—a black BMW M5 I splurged on last year—as I go through the bridge and turn onto Main Street. A red truck is going under the speed limit in front of me. It’s the perfect welcome to the town.

I have a full month ahead of me until my next contract starts, with nothing to do but figure out my grandma’s cryptic message in her will after she gave me the land I spent my summers on. The small apple orchard, plus the house and the barn. All mine. Much to my mom’s disappointment. She thought she was getting all of it. Just the thing our already tenuous relationship needed. I’ve already let three calls from her go to voicemail today.

He’ll know what to do.

That’s what the will said. I have no idea what she was hoping for. I don’t know what to do with the property. Most of the apple orchard burned in a fire, and the house hasn’t been lived in since my grandma moved to the nursing home in Burlington. I have no idea what shape it’s in, or what can even be done with it.

Does she want me to keep it? I have no idea how to care for an orchard, even a small one. I’m not even sure what I’d do with the house. I’ve never had a permanent home to go to. I spent most of my childhood going from one dingy apartment to the next and most of my career living in temporary places, going from one consulting job to another. I had an apartment in Boston for a while, but I got rid of it when I was barely there. Now, I just pay for a storage unit in Worcester.

I could sell the property, but that also doesn’t feel right. Leaving it in whatever shape it’s in now doesn’t make me feel settled either.

He’ll know what to do. Right. Well, I guess maybe I need to go see it and hope that . . . I don’t know, maybe my grandma’s ghost will be there to tell me what she meant, or a note will be hidden somewhere on the property with her wishes because I don’t have the slightest clue what to do.

Tomorrow I’ll inspect the house, walk the orchard, and start figuring out whether any of it is worth saving.

But first, I need to check into the only place to stay in Autumn Ridge—singular, as in one option, as in no alternatives. The website says it’s a bed-and-breakfast with quaint themed rooms or something. I don’t really care how it looks; I just need a bed, and the breakfast will be a bonus since that will be one meal I won’t have to figure out.